Mike Huckabee

Word went out while President Trump was in the hospital that he’d had enough of the Intelligence Community’s hiding of “Russia” documents and that he'd be using his time there to work on declassifying it all. Not surprisingly, he was true to his word.

He has DONE IT.

As he tweeted on Tuesday, “I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!”

Hallelujah.

Though we’ve heard from reputable sources that CIA Director Gina Haspel was holding on with her teeth to all remaining materials that might embarrass the Agency, rest assured that it's all coming out. Failure to produce these documents --- well, Director Haspel, I think that’s called “obstruction of justice.” Hand everything over now. Anyone who tries to slow the process can clean out his or her desk immediately and be escorted out, and they’d better hire themselves a good lawyer. As Devin Nunes said on Sunday, “THIS IS OVER.”

Last week, documents were declassified showing that then-CIA Director John Brennan personally briefed President Obama and other national security officials about information that Russian intel had learned Hillary Clinton was going after Trump with a made-up Russia scandal, tying Trump with Putin and the so-called hacking of DNC emails to detract from her own (real) email scandal. When former FBI Director James Comey was asked last Wednesday under oath about the investigatory lead the FBI got after this briefing, he laughably said “that doesn’t ring any bells with me.”

But now, in the first of what is sure to be a cascade of many document releases, we have Brennan’s own handwritten notes made after the briefing that Comey can’t seem to remember. They were first released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe with heavy redactions on Tuesday; one may assume from Trump’s tweet that the un-redacted versions will be available right away pursuant to his order.

Investigative reporter Sara Carter has a good analysis of what was going on with Brennan and why he might have supplied those notes. Remember, a smart intel guy is going to think in terms of “CYA.”

Most of the Brennan notes as seen here are still almost totally redacted. This is obviously the way Haspel intends members of Congress (and us) to see them. Trump is saying that will change.

Brooke Singman at FOX News also reported this on Tuesday.

Brennan’s notes reinforce what Ratcliffe included in his letter last week to Sen. Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ratcliffe also declassified a CIA memo showing that officials referred the matter to James Comey and Peter Strzok at the FBI for potential investigation. This really should "ring a bell" with Comey.

Right now, we’re still having to deal with redactions, as in Brennan’s largely blacked-out note that says, “We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED], CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

Won’t it be nice to know who [REDACTED] is?

One other part of Brennan’s notes that isn’t redacted consists of cryptic notes in the margins: “JC,” “Denis” and “Susan.” Easy guesses are that he was talking about James Comey, Denis McDonough (Obama’s chief of staff) and Susan Rice.

Importantly, since one way Brennan can "C" his "A" is to say that the "dossier" was Russian disinformation, numerous sources have characterized Hillary’s plot as NOT being Russian disinformation. One observation that makes particularly good sense: “This is not Russian disinformation. Even Brennan knew, or he wouldn’t be briefing the President of the United States on it.” Another source said, “...this information has been sought by hundreds of congressional requests for legitimate oversight purposes and was withheld for political spite --- and the belief that they’d never get caught.”

Ratcliffe himself said in a statement to FOX News, “To be clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence Community. I’ll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was obtained in the coming days.”

As reported at NOQ (“News. Opinion. Quotes”) Report, “The President has promised to [eliminate the redactions] and offer complete transparency just in time for the November elections.” Mr. President, please make this happen IMMEDIATELY, as millions of people have already voted early. As I’ve long said, early voting is a bad idea, because voters need and deserve all the information they can get before casting their ballots. Holding information until after an election is in itself a political decision with potentially huge political consequences. We have only 27 days before voting (at least non-fraudulent voting) ends.

Paul Sperry, a longtime source of ours, tweeted, “When all the documents are finally declassified, and all the redactions removed from reports, the nation will see that the FBI and CIA not only knew that the Russia “collusion” allegations against Trump were a political dirty trick, but that they were in on the trick.”

Finally, Sean Hannity, on his TV show Tuesday night, did a segment on this breaking news featuring Gregg Jarrett, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, who was Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign manager.

Of course, Jarrett has reported at length about Hillary and the Russia hoax, not to mention Obama’s cover-up. “He [Obama] sat there silently,” Jarrett said Tuesday night, “as our government was thrown into turmoil for the last four years over what he knew, based on the intelligence presented to him by John Brennan, which was phony information conjured up by Hillary Clinton...”

Lewandowski was more focused on the two-tier justice system and who is going to pay for this CRIME, the greatest hoax in political history. He said Trump told him in 2018 (!) that, yes, Obama, Biden, Brennan, Clapper and Comey DID KNOW it was all a hoax. They attempted to depose a duly-elected President, yet “not one person has been put in jail for this yet.”

The time has come. As David Bossie said Tuesday night, “You don’t have to be Columbo to figure this one out.”

Mike Huckabee

In Arizona, Republican Sen. Martha McSally is in a heated race against challenger Mark Kelly, who’s ahead in the polls because he's running more to the right than most Democrats these days. Kelly relies heavily on his resume as an astronaut while staying quiet about his positions on controversial issues. But he may be forced into talking issues thanks to two unique “October surprises.”

The first was an endorsement of McSally by three of Kelly’s fellow former astronauts. They say that being an astronaut doesn’t mean you’d be a good Senator, and they accuse Kelly of hiding a liberal agenda of high taxes, gun control and other leftwing positions behind his NASA resume.

And another moon boot just dropped with the release of an undercover tape of a Democratic field organizer admitting that Kelly isn’t talking about gun control because he has to get the Independents to vote for him. She says, “He’s trying to be elected and then he’ll implement the measures. You always can’t trust politicians.”

This story illustrates one of the key differences between the parties in the modern age. Democrats are afraid that if Republicans get elected, they’ll do exactly what they promised the voters they would do. And Republicans are afraid that if Democrats get elected, they’ll do exactly what they deny they plan to do. There's now plenty of evidence that both are correct.

Mike Huckabee

The Justice Department has sided with Capitol Hill Baptist Church in its lawsuit against the DC government and Mayor Muriel Bowser. The church argues that DC’s ban on outdoor church services is a clear violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

The church’s attorneys from First Liberty Institute say the government is under a high burden of proof that any intrusion on First Amendment rights must be to advance a compelling government interest, such as public safety. But by banning outdoor church services while allowing, and even endorsing and participating in, much larger protest gatherings, the Mayor and DC officials are clearly discriminating against people of faith while allowing exceptions for those they agree with. That’s not how the First Amendment works, and the DOJ agrees.

In announcing the DOJ’s stance on the case, the head of the Civil Rights Division said this:

“The right to free exercise of religion and the right to protest are both enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. We are a nation dedicated to freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. The District of Columbia has, unfortunately, neglected these rights. The Justice Department is committed to defending both of these fundamental freedoms and in supporting all Americans’ rights to worship as they choose.”

There are more good quotes at the link, so read the whole thing. This is such an open-and-shut case of unconstitutional and illegal targeting by government officials, with even the Justice Department siding with the target, that I assume the only hope of DC prevailing in court would be if it lands in front of Judge Emmet Sullivan.